Alex Sarama () is a British basketball coach. He is an assistant coach and director of player development for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. In October 2025, he was appointed head coach of the Portland Fire, an expansion franchise in the Women's National Basketball Association, set to debut in 2026. Sarama is associated with the application of skill acquisition concepts and the constraints-led approach in basketball.
Alex Sarama is originally from Guildford, England, where he attended St Peter's Catholic School. He started coaching basketball as a teenager and later founded the Guildford Goldhawks, a youth basketball club.
Sarama joined NBA Europe and worked with the league's office in Madrid. From 2020 to 2023, Sarama served as head coach of Pallacanestro College Basket Borgomanero in Italy. During this period, he implemented training and player development methods motivated by contemporary skill acquisition research.
He worked as director of methodology for the London Lions of the British Basketball League after his time at College Basket in Italy. Alongside his role with the London Lions, Sarama joined the Rip City Remix, the NBA G League affiliate of the Portland Trail Blazers, for the 2023âÂÂ24 season as assistant coach and director of player development.
In 2024, he joined the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA as assistant coach and director of player development, supporting head coach Kenny Atkinson. During the 2024âÂÂ25 regular season, the Cavaliers finished with a 64âÂÂ18 record and secured No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
In October 2025, Sarama was named the first head coach of the Portland Fire, an expansion franchise in the WNBA, set to debut in the 2026 season.
He has published a book Transforming Basketball: Changing How We Think About Basketball Performance, released in 2024.
Sarama is an advocate of the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to skill acquisition and practice design, a methodology that emphasises decision-making, adaptability and game-representative learning environments rather than isolated and repetitive drills. His application of CLA principles was related with player development systems he implemented during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers. When he was working under head coach Kenny Atkinson, Sarama contributed to practice design and development frameworks. Atkinson publicly said that the organisation aimed to "get ahead of the league" in areas such as player development and methodology, with Sarama's appointment forming part of that strategic direction. Sarama's work and his adoption of CLA-based coaching in the NBA was reported by The Athletic, which explored how ecological dynamics and constraints-led methods are increasingly used by elite coaches and organisations.